2019 CHUSS Symposium underscores relevance of Humanities and Social Sciences to national development

Brief:

With support from Gerda Henkel Stiftung and the Andrew. W Mellon Foundation, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2018 introduced annual symposium series as one of the ways of fostering a vibrant academic environment in the university and the country.

The symposiums provide platform to scholars, policy makers and members of the general public to discuss issues affecting humanity. They also provide an opportunity to PhD students and post-doctoral fellows to discuss and exchange ideas on their research.

The 2018 symposium brought together the region’s Humanities and Social Sciences scholars to debate issues affecting the Eastern African polity in the Fourth Industrial milieu. The central thesis of the discourse focused on the new tools and methods needed to interrogate the new world order ruled by information technology.

Organized under the theme, “A New East African: Agency and Identity Debates in the Region”, the 2019 CHUSS Symposium took major shifts in the East African society that have occurred in the last two decades as its point of departure in order to explore how agency and identity of the regions subjects have morphed during this period.

The two-day symposium held on 15th-16th May 2019 in the Makerere University Main Hall drew participants from across the region. It was presided over by Prof. Charles Olweny, former Vice Chancellor of Uganda Martyrs University Nkozi and currently Chancellor of Mbarara University of Science and Technology.

The symposium featured a number of activities including a keynote address titled, “Is there an identity and agency crisis in the humanities?” delivered by Prof. Ruth Mukama and research presentations by Professors and doctoral students at Makerere University.